One Page Rules: Alien Hives vs Dark Elf Raiders

One Page Rules fever continues to sweep through our gaming group and this week, after our first trial game, we took to the table with a "proper" battle. Following my trials with painting my Tyranids (hereafter Alien Hives) I took them into the fray against the Drukhari (hereafter Dark Elf Raiders).

We played 2000pts and the lists were as follows.

Alien Hives

• Hive Lord (winged, psychic) (530pts)
• Winged Grunts (10) (175pts)
• 4x Soul snatchers (5) (195pts)
• Hive Warriors (3) (160pts)
• Soul-snatcher Cult Allies
• Cult Leader (Psychic) (65pts)
• Cult Leader (40pts)
• 2x Minions (10) (plasma rifle) (125pts)

Dark Elf Raiders

• Dark Lord (100pts)
• Torture Master (Psychic) (85pts)
• 3x Warriors (5) - Barb cannon (190pts)
• Witches (5) (180pts)
• Winged Warriors (5) (230pts)
• Shadow Warriors (5) (265pts)
• Jetbkes (3) (240pts)
• Light Skimmer (1) -Teleport Gate (325pts)

We also used objective cards to determine the victor, and all agreed that it added some real spice to the game!

Throat-clearing

Now then, as I was involved in the game I didn't take any photos, so the images are brought to you via the mobile phone of one of the other players (thanks J). Also, we didn't take a careful note of details so I'll talk about the match in broad terms.

Into the battle

We set the table and terrain in a random way, making a simple ruined townscape emerging from a bombed out desert, chose sides and began the set up. We agreed the bomb craters were difficult terrain and cover. For the buildings, they were climable, and blocked line of sight if there were no windows or gaps, but otherwise offered cover.

We set up six numbered objectives using the usual objective placement rules (they clustered around the middle of the board) and started deploying one unit alternately. Both sides kept units in reserve, using the "ambush" rules. 

The Dark Elf Raiders set up their forces mostly in cover around 12" into the field.

I was playing on the team with my Alien Hives and the plan was simple: throw the soul-snatchers into the dark elf raider lines to cause havoc, and use the rest of the army to try to achieve the objectives.

So we deployed the soul-snatchers up front, and the rest in cover in a second line. The Winged Grunts and Hive Lord were flying high above, ready to swoop down into the battle. After deployment, the soul-snatchers used their special ability to surge fowards and occupy as many objectives as they could, and set up ready to swarm into melee.

The battle would last the regulation four turns.

The Alien Hive deployment and pre battle surge gets them into a good starting position

Soul-snatchers hunkering down in a crater for cover

Let the swarming commence!!

Soul-snatcher cults line up their shots

Soul-snatcher cultists with a good overwatch position

Dark Elf jetbikes lurking on the flank

Turn 1

The soul-stealers did their job well, but the dark elf raiders weather the assault. Most of the soul-snatchers were wiped out by barb-gun fire. Otherwise the positions didn't change much.

Score: Alien Hives 2 - 0 Dark Elf Raiders

Turn 2

Both sides dropped their ambushing units into play. The Alien Hives dropped theirs onto objective markers and into the Dark Elf Raiders backfield, whereas the Dark Elves generally bolstered their line, plugging gaps punched by the now-dead soul-snatchers.

In a brutal exchange the Alien Hives were left with only three units, whereas much of the Dark Elf army was still intact.

Despite this , the Hives were able to stay ahead with achieving their objectives to maintain their lead.

Score: Alien Hives 4 - 2 Dark Elf Raiders

The Hive Lord descends on an objective to capture it

The Dark Elf Raider's Light Skimmer teleports in ready to sweep into the soul-stealer cultists

"Err...that thing has an energy ram on its bow...I don't fancy our chances..."

9 Impact hits and a failed morale check later, "...yeah, though so..."

Turn 3

The Dark Elves turned their attantion to trying to achieve some objectives, while the Hive Tyrant wreaked havoc. The Dark Elves turned almost all their firepower on the flying beast, but lacking serious heavy firepower it lost only one of its 12 wounds!

Score: Alien Hives 7 - 4 Dark Elf Raiders

The soul-snatcher cult pushes forwards to capture another objective

Turn 4

With most of the rest of the Alien Hive destroyed, the final turn petered out with the Hive continuing to score objectives and the Dark Elves realised they couldn't catch up. Despite another round of fire trained on the Hive Lord, it survived practically intact, scoring further victory points.

Score: Alien Hives 9 - 5 Dark Elf Raiders

At this stage, the Dark Elves have free reign across the board, with little but the Hive Lord left to stop them.

The End

The Hive Lord flew back up into the sky, leaving its army dead, but having achieved a solid victory against the remaining Dark Elves.

All told is was an excellent battle and the five players at the table all enjoyed the evening. 

Observations - The Battle

The Alien Hive focussed on achieving objectives from the start of the battlefield and were able to score them consistently throughout the four turns. Sacrificing the soul-snatchers seemed to pin down and distract the Dark Elves.

Using the random objectives, there's a certain amount of luck in what you draw, but pushing on to capture as many objectives as possible seems to be a useful tactic. Certainly in turns 3 & 4, the Alien Hives were able to pick up points from objectives they already controlled, and had moved on from.  The Dark Elves didn't use their mobility to contest or capture these undefended objectives.

Observations - The Game

OPR are decetively "simple" and make for a wonderful free flowing game. But they also have a lot of tactical depth, with every turn presenting difficult decisions about what actions to prioritise.

I've not played enough yet to fully explore all of this fun gameplay, but I'm keen to get into it more. This battle I learned:

• Trying to get into melee is very costly in lost units.
• Be flexible, and focus on the current objectives.
• Keep an eye on the time. Four turns fly by!
• Accept losses, but make sure you gain something for it. Sure we lost all the soul-snatchers, but they did a great job of tying up much of the Dark Elf action in turns one and two. 
• Roll 6's!

We are very much enjoying them, and I'm busy finishing off half-built armies that I purchased for Warhammer 40,000 but would never finish for that game system. Getting into an new army in 40k is incredibly difficult, daunting and complex. Doing so in OPR is a joy!

Tyranids: Hive Fleet Zorn

Following our dive into One Page Rules, I've been looking at my old GW Warhammer 40,000 armies, to get them up to speed and playable for OPR.

One of the core joys of these rules is that I can look at armies I'd like to play but would never get to using the 40k rules, and they are actually viable to put on the table using OPR. Marvellous!

So, starting with my Tyranids, I kicked off on the 21 genestealers I acquired from somewhere years ago. I gave them a coat of ivory spray as an under/base coat. I'm really not sure what colour to paint these little fellows, but I want to get them done and on the table super-quick, so something simple I think.

I went with a sepia wash to make them bone coloured, and I considered therefore making them bone & red, which in GW terms would make them "Hive Fleet Kraken". 

However, faced with the choice at the painting table, I decided I wanted to keep a less striking and more muted tone to the army, and so I went with one of my favourite GW contrast colours, their leathery brown. This would push the Tyranids into the direction of Hive Fleet Karkinos.

Image by Catgutt here: https://pholder.com/hive-fleet-karkinos

There is NO WAY I'm painting them to look this good. I could probably get close with a lot of effort and time, but I want these on the table, so they'll be "grim dark", around the Zorn palette, and will be rough, scrappy and dirty looking. I didn't even bother correcting some of the errors, remaining flash etc. that the previous owner inflicted while building the little chaps!

Which means...ooh...perhaps these are Hive Fleet Zorn, a degenerated splinter of Karkinos. Interesting...

Anyway, after about an hour and 10 mins of work (not counting drying time) over a couple of lunchtimes and breaks, I've got the genestealers mostly finished.

I used Carroburg Crimson for the pinky bits, Snakebite Leather for the brown carapace, and for the claws and "back stripe" I used Basilicum Grey.

They are scrappy and a bit messy but they'll look fine enough ranked up. I wasn't sure switching away from the red was the right choice, but when the black/grey went on, I was very much happier with the results, and now I kind of like them.

I think the grey/black needs a bit of darkening down maybe.

In OPR terms these genestealer will make 4 units of "Soul Snatchers".

Next, onto the dreaded task of building the other models...

I glued the damn things together (have I ever mentioned how much I dislkie making multipart models?) double quick and made a start on the paint in a similar vein to the genestealers.

Now then...

Hmm...

I used carroburg crimson wash with the genestealers for the "fleshy bits" and figured I'd continue with that for these other models. I chose to make the extensive areas of wing membranes "fleshy" and...well...it didn't look right. 

In my efforts to try to fix it, the models became increasingly pink. Not what I indended at all.

OK, so, I actually think the pink is quite nice, but it just doesn't fit with the Zorn palette that I want with this tyranid army.  Its too bright and in my view unbalanced in colour tone. I was planning to have bone/brown as the theme, and the pink just overpowers that, changing the tone of the whole force to pink. It dominates to the overall appearance.

Ugh.

What do I do? 

I agonised over whether I just run with it or whether I repaint it to try to get it closer to what I want. I want the flesh tones to be less red and more orange/brown, so I think that's where I'm going with it.

INTERMISSION

And I'm back.

OK, so, with time to consider, and consulting with friends (and strangers online) I decided to try to fix the "pink problem". I gave it a wash of Guilliman Flesh contrast paint, and it seemed to improve the situation, really toning down the bright pink.

I'm happy its at a point where I can proceed and so i finished off the final bits and bobs (after taking the Tyranids into battle last night).

I have a couple of other units ordered and on the way, but for now, I'm calling the army done. Here it is in all its glory.

One Page Rules

For over a year now I've been toying about with One Page Rules (OPR), running small solo games to get up to speed.

One Page Rules are a free set of rules that have become very popular of late, providing an excellent game to use your fantasy and science fantasy armies with. they also have an excellent online army builder.

This week, OPR cropped up on our club table as a bit of a trial game. We didn't do much recording etc. as it was very much a training game, but there's a short report over at the Durham Wargames Group website here. I managed to take two measly photos before the fun and excitement overtook me!

We figured from turn one, that setting up high value targets in the open is a dangerous choice!

Plague brethren ready to get down with the sickness...

Briefly, I used a selection of my figures from my Death Guard and Crimson Fist Marines to put a small (1500pt) game of OPR on. 

As it turned out, OPR seem to have generated a burst of enthusiam within our group. The general feeling being these rules are:

• Fun to play, easy at their core, but with surprising tactical depth.
• Enjoyably engaging due to unit-by-unit alternate moves. You're always in the game rather than waiting about.
• Challenging as there are always difficult tactical choices to be made.
• Utilitarian because you can use whatever figure you want.

Dusty old collections, long dormant in lofts, and buried under the lead mountain are being dragged out and reassessed for use! I expect to see a mix of antiquated Games Workshop (GW) figures with newer models from GW and other manufacturers. Our resident gamer-with-the-3D rinter is also looking at printing suitable terrain. 

I've been looking at my British Redcoat Victorian Sci-fi models, and considering how best to add in some little tanks and support weapons for an OPR "Human Defence Force". I've also dug out a box of old orks, and considered finally painting up the rest of my Crimson Fists and Death Guard armies.

I also have some Tyranids that need some paint, and I think I can field 1500pts with what I have. They seem to be a quick and easy win on the painting table, so they're up first!

While I'm here I guess a quick run through of the start of the Tyranids would be in order.

Hive Fleet Zorn

Lustria In Flames

A very long time ago, in my younger salad days (1991) I was an aspiring illustrator trying to make a career of scribbling little pictures for books and such, all the while paying bills (barely) with some low-grade retail jobs. Nowadays they’d be called “minimum wage” but back then there was no minimum wage, so they were poverty pay at best. It was a struggle, but…err…I’m getting off topic.

My interest in gaming of all types, and at that time an obsession with Games Workshop’s roleplaying game Warhammer Fantasy collided with this aspiring “career” and I threw some doodles together and sent them off (in a stamped addressed envelope like a cave man) to Carl Sargent, the “head honcho” (as he signed his letters off to me) at Flame Publications. Flame Publications was a subsidiary of Games Workshop Ltd. from 1990 to 1992, that was set up to publish the books for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. They lost the license to Hogshead Publishing.

Anyway, Mr Sargent and the art director Tony Ackland seemed to like my little pictures and we corresponded for a while on commissioning me to produce some work for the up-coming Lustrian Supplement for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. As he said, my art would “constitute roughly 50% of the internal images, maybe 15-20 pieces”.

I remember being jolly excited by the prospect, and eagerly awaited the arrival of the source material they were sending me, along with design and style guidelines (which seemed to boil down to “do that, but with more spikes”).

A few dozen pages of typed text arrived, and I set about my commission with the abandon of a goblin fanatic! But within a few days, I got a phonecall (landline obviously) from Mr Sargent who sounded very gloomy.  Apparently, Games Workshop had pulled the plug on the project, so it was all over.

Ah well, when one door closes, etc.

So he said I could keep the stuff they’d sent as they were hoping to restart the project and would let me know if anything came of it.  Clearly it didn’t and the much-anticipated Lustrian Supplement never made it to print.

For 31 years I’ve had this old manuscript tucked in among my extensive Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay book collection. I understand its quite a rare thing, so I figured that I’d finally get round to digitising these old parchments. 

For those of you interested in the history of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying it may offer some interesting insight into the early stage of development of what could have led to playing games in the steamy jungles of far Lustria.

Enjoy!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Addendum.

Its also worth taking a look at the Awesome Lies blog, where I talked about this a while back (thanks Gideon!)

And some exceptional further work recostructing the possible structures of the supplement, had it made it to pring.